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[dirkzen]

So i've noticed whenever the subject of 'stone traps' comes up on the forums, there seems to be a lack of love for them.  They're quickly set up and ignored until weapon traps can be quickly manufactured.
Many seem to doubt their power and usefullness.   
However..  I have to say that in my current fortress, (nearly a decade of in-game time so far) I have them literally everywhere.
Edges of the map.  Both entrances.  Hallways.  In front of and behind doorways.
Layers upon layers of them.  Whenever a creature manages to overcome and dodge 4-5 of them in a row,  they end up getting bashed in the skull by the 6th and 7th.
I love them.
In my mind, I picture hundreds of tiny little spinning rocks shooting up from the ground and walls (if the trap is near a wall).

Recently, an angry, bloodthirsty badgerman sprinted down my hallway in search of another dwarf to maul after killing a gemcutter and my cook... he triggered nearly every trap on the floor.
He emerged by the staircase with a broken arm, a cracked skull,  broken ribs, and both legs severely lacerated and bruised as he collapsed into a bloody, unconscious heap right as my military showed up.

No weapons. No cages. No magma.
Nothing but tiny, spinning rocks.

I love stone traps.
How about you?

[Coolnesstod]

A stone trap killed one of my soldiers even though he was 5 tiles away, That was some !!FUN!!

[Girlinhat]

In bulk they can work, and bulk IS one of their strengths.  Rock is nigh-infinite, and it IS infinite once you start casting obsidian.  Cheaper than menacing spikes, certainly.

[Oaktree]

For a reloadable one-shot that uses up a mechanism I have opted to prefer cage traps. 

It is a way to use up rocks, and they are quick to build.  But you need lines of them, lots of lines of them... And then a single goblin leader dodge triggers them all in passing.  I think if they reset like weapon traps (even with a long reset time like days) I'd like them more.  But in the current format it's a lot of maintenance for relatively little pop compared to a cage trap, weapon trap, or spikes.

[Monkeyfacedprickleback]

I use them a lot in the caverns because it's hard to get weapon for weapon traps down there, but stone is readily availibly. My main beef with stonefall traps is  they're anticlimatic.
- The DRAGON Bloodfang the indiscriminate destroyer has come...
Mobilize the army For what will surely be an epic battle leaving little but scorched earth, corpses and an unstopable wall of flames.

Bloodfang the indiscriminate destroy has been killed by a rock. -_-#

[Ubiq]

Yes, they're reasonably effective, but not any more than a cage trap, which nets you a nice pet or prisoner for the same cost in mechanisms, or a weapon trap, which can instantly kill most opponents.

If you could load several rocks into them or they automatically reset themselves, they'd be a better option.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Currently, stonefall traps are comparable to loading a weapon trap with a training sword at a lower cost, but also being one-shot without distracting a mechanic.

Say, can clay load stonefall traps?

[melomel]

For a reloadable one-shot that uses up a mechanism I have opted to prefer cage traps. 

It is a way to use up rocks, and they are quick to build.  But you need lines of them, lots of lines of them... And then a single goblin leader dodge triggers them all in passing.  I think if they reset like weapon traps (even with a long reset time like days) I'd like them more.  But in the current format it's a lot of maintenance for relatively little pop compared to a cage trap, weapon trap, or spikes.

There's a draw-back to cage traps.  Actually, about a dozen million drawbacks to cage traps and they are all monkeys.

Bonobos.  Chimpanzees.  Gorillas.  Bilou.  Siamangs.  Seven different flavors of gibbon.  Not even getting into the giraffes and elephants and warthogs and rhinos, which are useful but also tend to appear in massive, hard-to-process herds.

I don't know why I keep settling in savage moist tropical broadleaf forests.  It's probably some kind of latent masochism.

[Stoutpants]

I've found stone traps to be useful a dispatching undead critters. Undead don't seem to have the agility to avoid them and one rock is usually all it takes to put one down.

[elf-fondling human]

Personally, I just prefer to make my invaders dodge into a hole. Works really well when the only entrance to my fort is across a 1x10 path covered in 100 spiked wooden balls. I fixed the part where they scare the hell out of my dwarves while they're down there, too. I just put ramps on the opposite end from my door so that they get another chance to dodge forward thirty times without falling back down or dieing.

[DrGravitas]

Spinning stones, that's a clever image! I pictured them as incredibly obvious things; giant boulders stacked on top of four rickety 2x4s. You step on the wrong spot and the mechanisms kick out one of the posts and the boulder falls on you. The kind of trap only an idiot would fall into and a giant could only barely squeeze into. Yet still effective because, hell, it's Dwarf Fortress!

[Mitchewawa]

Because a rock to the face serves the same as a ☼silver warhammer☼ to the face. Except the dwarf behind the warhammer is mobile and can work more than once and doesn't need a horde of slavering mechanics wielding more stones to fix the trap right after it bruises a goblin-king's foot.